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Bullfinch   Listen
noun
Bullfinch  n.  (Zool.) A bird of the genus Pyrrhula and other related genera, especially the Pyrrhula vulgaris or Pyrrhula rubicilla, a bird of Europe allied to the grosbeak, having the breast, cheeks, and neck, red. Note: As a cage bird it is highly valued for its remarkable power of learning to whistle correctly various musical airs.
Crimson-fronted bullfinch. (Zool.) See Burion.
Pine bullfinch, the pine finch.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bullfinch" Quotes from Famous Books



... did," thought I—"alas! for Baldy." "And Mary, and Caroline, and the rest of that lot?" "Are sent to Perkin's Red Rover, sir; but I believe some of them are in calf already by Bullfinch—and I have cut Peter for the lampas." The knife and fork dropped from my hands. "What can all this mean? is this their boasted kindness to their slaves? One of a family drenched with train—oil and brimstone, another cut for some horrible complaint never heard of before, called lampas, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... that likes less to be bantered than an absolute joker. He took refuge for a time at Lady Lillycraft's, until the matter should blow over; and occupied himself by looking over her accounts, regulating the village choir, and inculcating loyalty into a pet bullfinch by teaching him to whistle ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... flying creatures are now very abundant in all the islands; but I could tell you some curious and interesting facts, too, as to the mode of their arrival and the vicissitudes of their settlement. For example, during the age of the Forest Beds in Europe, a stray bullfinch was driven out to sea by a violent storm, and perched at last on a bush at Fayal. I wondered at first whether he would effect a settlement. But at that time no seeds or fruits fit for bullfinches to eat existed on the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... Mrs Nickleby, angrily, 'but that's just the way. If they had said I was niece to a piping bullfinch, what would you care? But I have no sympathy,' whimpered Mrs Nickleby. 'I don't expect it, that's ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... spring dies away. We can only see a thing born once. And it may be ours, yet not ours. I have sighted the perfect Sharon-flower, far up on Guidon, yet it was not mine; it was too distant; I could not reach it. I have seen the silver bullfinch floating along the canon. I called to it, and it came singing; and it was mine, yet I could not hear its song, and I let it go; it could not be happy so with me. . . . I stand at the gate of a great city, and see all, and feel the great shuttles of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... heart. Wonder filled it as she rode home to Bayfield, and by the bridge she reined up Mercury as if to take her bearings in an unfamiliar country. At her feet rushed the Axe, swollen by spring freshets; a bullfinch, wet from his bath, bobbed on the sand- stone parapet, shook himself, and piped a note or two; away up the stream, among the alders, birds were chasing and courting; from above the Bayfield elms, out of spaces of blue, ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... different thing. The drag can be made to any strength; enabling hounds to run as if they were tied to it, and can be trailed so as to bring in all the dangerous places in the country with a certain air of plausibility, enabling a man to look round and exclaim, as he crams at a bullfinch or brook, 'he's leading us over a most desperate country—never saw such fencing in all my life!' Drag-hunting, however, as we said before, is not popular with sportsmen, certainly not with huntsmen, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... struggled, dazed and stupid, to their feet, panted, and looked about them. Several fallen Lancers had even time to re-mount. Meanwhile the impetus of the cavalry carried them on. As a rider tears through a bullfinch, the officers forced their way through the press; and as an iron rake might be drawn through a heap of shingle, so the regiment followed. They shattered the Dervish array, and, their pace reduced to a walk, scrambled out of the khor on the further side, ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... gifted son, she read with him, and for him, certain of the masters whom to know well is to possess the foundations of true culture. It is a pretty scene and suggestive—the lad and his mother, reading together "till the wee small hours" Plutarch, Grote's History of Greece, Bullfinch's Mythology, Dante and the plays of William Shakespeare. Fortunately his mother was not his only helper. Near at hand was Theodore Parker who was said to possess the best private library in Boston, and whose passion for aiding young men was well known. He befriended King ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds

... cell by himself. Yet they have every convenience and comfort. You have only to press a button or light a little lamp. Their papers are beautifully filed. Books abound. There are no children or animals, save half a dozen stray cats and one aged bullfinch—a cock. I remember," she broke off, "an Aunt of mine who lived at Dulwich and kept cactuses. You reached the conservatory through the double drawing-room, and there, on the hot pipes, were dozens of them, ugly, squat, bristly little plants each in a separate pot. Once in a hundred years ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf

... the same kind roof Sheltered a bullfinch and a raven bold, The one with song mellifluous charmed the house; The other's cries incessant wearied all. With loud hoarse voice he screamed for bread and meat And cheese; the which they quickly brought, in hope To stop thereby his brawling tongue. The finch Did ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon



Words linked to "Bullfinch" :   architect, Pyrrhula, Pyrrhula pyrrhula, genus Pyrrhula



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